Immersive sound is a fairly recent development in the audio industry and generally refers to sound which may be reproduced from and experienced in three dimensions.
An immersive sound experience may be made up of a number of sound sources which, when output in an immersive sound system, may appear to a listener to emanate from different and sometimes varying positions. For example in an immersive sound experience, a sound source being a dog barking may appear, to the listener, to be emanating from the rear left-hand-side of the listener. Another sound source, being an aeroplane, for example, may appear to the listener to originate from the upper rear right-hand-side of the listener and travel over the listener towards the upper front left-hand-side.
The placing and moving of a sound source within a three dimensional immersive sound environment can typically be done during production where, for example, a sound engineer places the sound source within the immersive environment.
Data as to from where in an immersive environment a sound source is designed to emanate is typically stored in association with the sound source's audio signal data in an audio object file. This audio object file may then be used in replaying the sound source in an immersive sound environment such that it appears to a listener to emanate from its intended position.
There are, however, some limitations associated with the placing and varying of sound sources within a three dimensional immersive environment. In some cases, sound sources may be placed or positioned using a user interface provided by a sound mixing program, such as Spatial Audio Designer™ by New Audio Technology GmbH. The user interface may provide an x-y-plane screen for moving the sound source in the x-y-plane and a separate y-z- or x-z-plane screen for adjusting the height of a sound source. A restriction associated with such a user interface is that simultaneous, or unbroken, adjustment of a sound source's location in the x-y-plane and its height may be cumbersome, at best.
Specialist hardware alternatives do exist, typically providing a joystick with which the sound source can be positioned, such as the Nuage™ surround panner provided by JL Cooper Electronics. While such hardware devices may alleviate this problem to some extent, they may not offer versatility and can be expensive and fairly immobile.
There is accordingly a need for a solution which alleviates these and/or other problems, at least to some extent.
The preceding discussion of the background to the invention is intended only to facilitate an understanding of the present invention. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgment or admission that any of the material referred to was part of the common general knowledge in the art as at the priority date of the application.